


you win (or you die)

by colferstilinski



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, M/M, Magic, Pseudo-Incest, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 06:36:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colferstilinski/pseuds/colferstilinski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A boy of only ten and two loses the only blood he has left in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you win (or you die)

Moons ago, there was a long, brutal winter that came and shrivelled out half of living men in the West. It swept through the planes of Falister lands with death and agony, and for those who had not outsmart the cold, they wilted into still corpses, buried under the whitest of winter’s rain.

The cold finally did withdrew after a stretch of time, and so did the return of the nomads and common folks who had ran from the West to the other regions of Falister to seek for warmth and bricks over their heads. However, there was a house that made its known after winter blew over.

They used to be a myth, told with folly and morbid curiosity, since not one soul knew of them – knew of their disappearance summers ago – but they’ve rose from the hidden depths of Falister, hailed upon the West, and called upon the nearly barren land as their own, with a commitment to build a kingdom out from dust and sand, _Beacons._

As they came, they also brought about the new knowledge to the other seven kingdoms, documented on parchment and stamped with a sigil of their house as the eighth kingdom to deem in all of Falister. It is noted in dark washed ink that whoever demanded for war upon them would be returned with death and paraded in humiliation for their home people to weep.

 _The Hales_ , they call them, the towns’ people in the West.

The Hales are known for their usual stealth and their dexterous handling for battle in the heart of night, and that those who carried the surname all bore the same uncanny eyes of an animal that preys—it is said to be a wolf, a beast with eyes that lit with the night’s sun.

These stories of them are bred through common talk at the market places, fostering whispered awes from the children and grunted soliloquys from those who mocked them in between dark alleys where men traded stones for good meat and fruits while whores dangled their private bits in poorly clothed bodices.

It’s all that anyone does to feel normal anymore. The quiet gossiping, the inane and dubious talk of their kingdom rulers for the war has long been done and the threat of winter returning has waned greatly since it is now dawning upon the hottest year of summer since the return of the Hales, and rain has yet been sighted for in weeks.

There were other stories too, terrifying ones, those that were told to settle the unruly babes into a good step.

Most of them were about a witch, cunning and sly she was, was taken and trained by the Jasckies. They are a small group of magic practitioners that lives in a small town masked in with mountains at the far North and they claimed her in their house, nurturing her like their own with wisdom about the darks and reels her in with maegi and taboo.

 _Maegi_ is a darkness of magic spelt only by a woman who bears a tainted heart, one who shall never swell with fruits in her womb. It is the basest of magic that even the wisest of maesters are taught never to dabble with and are largely frowned upon in any housed kingdoms with respectable names that practices it.

To meddle with maegi is unspeakable even in the now, a practise of where a witch is made to sacrifice one’s blood for life, or an innocent born for unspeakable powers.

It is then said that is because of her, the witch of maegi, who spun a curse upon the Hales before she died in a blood storm of fire and ash from the imbalance of life. Her magic dealt through regardless, it made the Hales impeccable at battle, however, their calling for the days where the night sun is at full mast are their greatest weakness. The one and only that renders them almost incapacitate with pain that comes with the breaking of bones, and humanity.

These were just myths though, stories that were spun by old fools who can’t tell apart their sons and brothers in light.

However, since the return of the Hales, just fifteen moons shy is when the first kingdom called bluff.

The house of the Barothes, the older common folks would tell. They were a sea over by the North, a small island bred with ruthless barbarians that drank and ate themselves into a vulgar stupor.

They rode their ships down on at the breaking of dawn and docked upon the coast of Beacons at the settle of dusk. They stead on their horses and rode towards Beacons with unsheathed swords at the ready on their hips and mouths full with a merry song.

_‘Seek ye o’ shall die in vain, Seek ye Hale o’cowards they will run. Fight ye! Fight ye, or thus shall be murdered with our cocks and fists!’_

The Barothes died in heavy vain that night with their act of underestimating the Hales and overestimating themselves to be stronger than they really were.

The whole town was filled with their war cries that slowly tremored to guttural shrieks of pain when arrows shot from the dead of night, flamed with fire and poisoned ash that hooked their hearts in precise aim. It burned flesh in their wake until hundreds of Barothes men were left writhing on sand and mud until the morning light washed the last of their whimpers away.

All one thousand, three hundred, and forty eight Barothes died that night and the world saw a kingdom lost while the Hales only lost twenty three of their finer knights, along with ten innocent civilians that caught amidst of their war.

It was also the same night where a boy of only ten and two loses the only blood he has left in the world.

-

He tries even though his entire body is shaking, chest heaving with barely contained grief and hazy smoke but nothing seems to work. His limbs are too short and stunted from his age, movements too slow and jarring from inexperience at battle and the lick of flames scorches up to an unbearable heat that he can hear the sizzle of flesh being torched.

He wails out in a frenzy of choked up sobs, summoning for a help that never comes, until finally, it’s too late.

His father seizes up on the muddy ground, screaming and convulsing, globs of blood frothing at the mouth while his body lights up in a bright dance of flames, lit from the arrow jacked at his neck, burning skin and tender sinew until—

 _Until_ the screams from his father halts in the air and his sorrowful ones are meshing into the chaos of night. Until his father’s blood pools into a murky russet of extinguished pain and agony around his feet. Until his father burns, and burns, with his corpse left dried and crusty with flakes of the aftermath.

A bastard son he no longer is, and on this night he becomes a bastardized orphan with no home, no money and all that is left are stains of his passed father’s blood, wet and rotting, on his hands and the scabs of his knees.

The boy mourns into the morning.

-

_“Come child, seat.” The lady speaks, patting softly onto the small space beside her on the bench just outside the shop where she seats. Her voice is thick and foreign, accent unlike most of the common Westerners, and her hair is done nicely in a sweet bun with wisps of greying blonde hair framing her face. “I may be blind and old, but I know your father has sought out for a good buy at the wet markets, so come, seat, and talk to a dying lady. Nothing is to be bought with pottery when the day’s sun is the highest.”_

_The boy scrunches his nose, shaking his head jerkily even though she can’t see. “Father told me to stay in the store, guard his pots, and you know I am my word. I’ve promised.”_

_She laughs, palpable like the wind on the hills. “Aye, you sweet child, that is why you are a good son, I should steal you and call you mine, but ah, to the old gods I swear that this will be a good story. It may very well be my last.”_

_“That is what you say too in all the past times.” He admonishes her kindly, a chuckle dying on his lips. He leaves his post where he sits on a small stool at the back, hands wet with warm clay and oil. “You are no noble lady, Avilynne, but your words are too sweet.”_

_“I get the company I want, don’t I?” Avilynne says and there’s a warm smile present on her face when he seats beside her, the creases at her eyes folding with age. “How are you, boy?”_

_“Good,” He tells her, biting his lips hesitantly as he wipes his dirty hands onto his woollen trousers. “Father says he may return to Crasmere a fortnight soon.”_

_“So soon?”_

_“Yes, he says that harvest of wheat and corn are the finest during this time of year, and that he has enough gold to spare to get us new wools for clothes, but—” He sighs, shoulders slumping with the movement. “—I wish he would bring me too! I am big enough to ride now. Fat Thomas even lets me ride his goat!”_

_“Silly boy,” She joshes playfully. “Horses are much bigger than goats, and you need a saddle to ride on one, too. Do you know how to work a saddle?”_

_“Yes,” The boy says indignantly, with an air of fake confidence. “Of course I do!”_

_Avilynne smacks her tongue at him, shaking her name until he relents._

_“Fine, maybe I don’t, but that don’t mean that father can’t teach me. I’m not a stupid child.”_

_“Not stupid,” Avilynne says, her clouded eyes blinking into the sun’s heat. “But, nevertheless, still a child.”_

_He jumps to his feet, impish anger bubbling at the back of his throat. How dare she? This woman is nothing but a commoner like him yet she thinks herself. Yes, he may be a bastard boy but that don’t mean he is worthless._

_“I turn ten and two in the next full moon which makes me no child, Avilynne, and you’ve come to my father’s store, invite me for company, but yet you mock me in my face. I should chase you out of my store’s front.”_

_The lady pulls a tight smile like she has had her fair share of babes’ insolence. “Then answer me boy, have you seen the wars? Have you watched the person you love knifed in the stomach with an old kitchen’s cutter that’s too blunt to even cut through pigs? A bastard child you are, but that don’t mean you are a man. You are no knight to the Hales but a peasant boy, just like I am to the West.”_

_“Do not call me no peasant,” He roars, wiping furiously at his eyes._

_“Good,” She says. “Now you taste the anger in your mouth, aren’t I right, boy? I need you to be angry for this story.”_

_The boy, exasperated and cheeks tinting in pink, yells out, “Are you mad, Avilynne? Have you gone mad with age?!”_

_“Seat, child,” She tells him ruefully. “I need you angry, not spouting ill of me.” She stills, her lips pursed, until the boy inches back onto the seat reluctantly. “This is my last story, boy. I do know this. I can feel it in my weakened bones. I may sleep tonight and never wake in the morrow, so I beg you an ear, and your temper—for me, for my story, for my last words.”_

_He grimaces at her words but reluctantly hums an affirmative acknowledgement for her to continue._

_“The East,” Avilynne begins, a sweet longing laced with sadness in her voice. Heavy, unlike how she starts with her other stories. “It held a sun that bathed for days in the skies, m’boy. Not like Beacons, not like where we house in the West, oh gods no. The lands there? They bled heat, and were always kept honey kissed warm with sand, fielded with a wild array of tall grasses, trees and the wilderness.”_

_The boy huffs, displeased. “I know of the East. Father has talked of it once when I was a babe.”_

_Yes, he remembers. It’s a faint memory, just a small broken collection of rough voices and smells that consisted in it, but it was definitely there. He remembers that moment because it was the first time his father picked up his cup and drank his fill in red._

_Father has always hated wine._

_“Is that true, child?” She bristles, clicking her teeth. “Did you know that winter never do come in the East? Not even the longest winter had a chance against their heat, and that only once every year will the skies cry? That is only after weeks of sun and sweat—I have known some whom have died from the sun there.”_

_“What?” He chokes out, snickering, the anger from before ebbing slowly from his body. “Do they not know how to seek shelter?”_

_“You should not laugh at people’s deaths, boy, and had I not said I needed you to be angry?”_

_“Yes, Avilynne.”_

_She continues her story about how in the East live three kingdoms all in copacetic allies. The most well-known house is said to be the house of Pardieu. They live closest to the East wall, and have the largest in strength in their army and common people. She then whispers a gossip take that they actually sailed from the seas, from the far lands beyond where men have ever shipped, and that they all speak in their native language of Argentiuns rather than the common tongue._

_The next house, she tells, is far smaller, just five hundred in tally. The MurCroals. Most of the men from there are raised to be knights for the Pardieu—their lives are signed for it upon moment of birth. Either that or they are to be led out with common lives with their wife and families while working as being an armorer, a blacksmith, and the odd trader there or two._

_The last house is more of a small guild that belongs to the kingdom rather than known as a house. The Whittes. Most of them were formed by the same blood, so the Pardieu had granted acknowledgement for their refined skins and thereby adhered for them to be the safe keeper and are the last house to complete what is thus known as The Kingdom of the East._

_“I bore a child with a man I have come to love and to wed in the East, just five summers after winter came in the West. I swelled with a boy, and birthed a fat babe in my arms who wrapped his small hands on my little finger after he took his first breath, but he was taken from my arms—stolen from me on his fifth breath and slaughtered in my face by a midwife who helped me birth.”_

_“Avilynne—” He starts, bottom lip quivering, but she shakes her head, interrupting._

_“Don’t feel sorry for me boy, I don’t need your pity.” She spits, blinking harshly at the tears welling in her eyes. “That was years ago, and my son would have been your father’s age if here were to live. He’s dead, and I’ve mourned for years for his passing. I don’t want your sympathy. I want you to avenge for me.”_

_“Avenge?” He sniffles, wiping the mucus dripping from his nose._

_“Yes,” She says. “Grow up, learn to saddle a horse, wield a sword with a bastard’s hand and avenge for me, for my dead babe. Would you? My morrow is bleak and I’ve no sons or daughters in my husband’s surname, gods—promise me you would, child?”_

_“I’m no knight.” He tells her. “I’ve no gold for steel to buy a sword, and no stones for any horses. Pray tell, sweet Avilynne, how would I avenge you? I am just a child, like you said.”_

_“Then lie to a dying lady, bastard.”_

_The boy hardens his face even though his cheeks are blotchy with tear tracts and eyes are red rimmed with unfallen tears. “I promise.”_

_-_

_He leaves her that noon with a torn piece of paper in hand and a name in his palm._

_Catherine Pardieu._

_-_

When the morning sun starts to rise, he wipes away the dry caking of pitiful sleep and tears on his eyes and settles a small satchel on his back that he retrieved from his now rundown home. He has a handful of stones in his pockets from where Father left hidden under the thin quilts on the mattresses they lay.

He sets for the East and prides himself that he only looks back once.

-

The boy manages to go on foot for about two weeks and a little before his boots finally gives way. He grouses vehemently under his breath with each step until the ground betrays him and almost made him fall on his face when the torn sole of his boots got stuck onto uneven rocks.

He decides to call it a rest, wiping the sweat pooled at his throat as he limps to a dry patch of grass nearby that’s shadowed by a large leafy willow.

There’s bitterness in his thoughts as he plops himself down, grunting at the sour leavings in his thighs, most of them are inner turmoil and anger that he is unable to ride.

If he could, he would have stolen a horse back in Beacons, and would have made travelling through these jagged roads he current embarks infinitesimally easier. However, the commoners that live in the village back home have never been taught to ride, and for those who do, never have enough gold to purchase any horses.

There are exceptions though. Fat Thomas is one of them. He is a boy birthed into a large family that comes with a small wealth from maintaining a long stretch of farms that sells meat to the markets. He has uncles and cousins that also help make side earnings of real gold and silvers through trading too—Fat Thomas even showed him a coin made of gold once.

He got jealous and stepped on his toe.

“Your stories of brave men and knighthood in the forest are proper bullshit, Avilynne.” He snarls bitterly, voice raspy from disuse, while he kneads at his calves until it loosens up under his fingers before he starts to work the laces of his boots with jerky movements.

The boots are of no use now, leather is heavily discoloured from lengthy use and the stitches he did near the wooden patens for father are beyond state for any repairs even if he tries. The material around it have curled and frayed from his previous bad needlework.

He is no lady with nimble fingers with a harness for good focus, gods no. He’s just a little bastard child who spends too much time spinning warm clay in his hands until it moulds into something worthy to be sold for two stones. Just enough for stale bread.

He sighs dejectedly and watches the way his boots falls onto the grass with a dull thud after he shakes them off vigorously.

There’s still a lot more yards to cover before he reaches the East, which is if he rides, but if he continues to go on foot—It is twice the distance more, and the thought of it makes him wince. With that, his stomach rumbles, loud and unpleasant, gurgling the hunger he has tried to ignore for the last few hours.

He hasn’t eaten in three moons, and the days before, he was living off fruits he founds in high trees, shattered nuts and rotten mushrooms he dug out from mucky grasses. He doesn’t even have a knife on him to slaughter a forest wilding to feast—Avilynne was right.

She always is.

He is just a child, no more a fool than the ones who juggles for the King, only to be sent to their death by the lions.

He sighs, picking himself up from the ground and slings the satchel around his shoulders, giving his boots one long, forlorn look before he continues to walk. The night’s sun is drawing soon and these parts of the forest are no good to set camp for sleep. He learnt that on the first moon when he wakes up with four snakes slithering around his feet before he shits himself.

There’s just one thought thrumming in his mind as he walks: Crasmere isn’t too far, anyway.

-

He only reaches Crasmere a fortnight later and by then the soles of his feet have hardened into the likes of leather, peppered with a variety of healed to newly lashed out cuts. He knows that if anyone takes just a brief glance at him, they would mistake him for a homeless peasant, and they’d be right.

The skin coloured tunic he dons on has holes in several places and it’s muddied with blood and wet sand from the forest pathways while his dull brunette hair that has grown out a little after two full moons of not grooming is now slick with sweat and grease.

There is an uncomfortable itch under his skin that he can’t rid of for days not. The feel of grime and muck on his face, armpits, and around his cock—all the places that has never dawn on him before is now an annoying persistence at the forefront of what he does.

The last time he stood under clean water was just three days past before he left for the West, and it was in a small bath shack that Brom maintains with his brothers, two corners down from father’s store.

It’s a dingy place, dully lit with cheap waxed candles and unpolished granite floors. No babes his age or younger usually enters unless they are mothered by whores—except for him. He goes there with big, pleading eyes and a handful of pottery as gifts in exchange for a working shower when begging gets him nowhere.

However now, there’s just a constant stench of his own perspiration and musk, pungent like rotten fish down at the docks and his skin littered with scabs. Yet, nothing compares to the hunger that lies at the sides of his stomach.

It twists and sours in him until he actually goes down on his knees and plucks grass to keep his mouth busy with chewing. The things he would do for a warm meal with fresh bucket water flushing down and a quilt that keeps him warm when the moon is high—the people he would kill for it.

It startles him when he finally reaches on land that isn’t mud and forest and greens. He peers up through exhausted vision and squints around—there’s light a few miles up, a wavering smell of cooked meat and the bustle of civilization.

He runs for it.

-

Crasmere isn’t like how he pictured whenever Father shares with him about his trips. Instead, it’s a small town with narrow bricked walkways, wooden crates littering north and south with silks, white pigeons and spices. The people are rude, grimacing at him as he walks past—especially the wives tending to their husbands at their booths.

He manages to steal a loaf of bread from one of them, runs away with it tucked in his armpits and hides in a sharp corner, gorging into it with a pleasurable moan when his teeth sinks into it.

“Didn’t your father teach you that stealing is bad, boy?” A man grunts out.

He snaps his eyes up, roving at the man as he makes out if he’s dangerous. He’s no older than thirty with a battle scar splashed across his face and his hair is kissed by the sun. On his stomach, a thick leather belt is pulled tight over the glinting silver mail he has on.

“He would,” He wipes his mouth hastily and spits at his shoes. “But he’s dead.”

“ _Hm_ ,” The man says, humming as he slowly approaches him. He darts his eyes around and wonders if he can make a run for it—if he’d die while making a run for it. He’s never been a taker of risks, always deciding to be a coward and hide behind his father’s legs.

If he dies, he’s gonna die not being afraid.

“Then what’s a boy like you doing here in Crasmere?” He asks and he sounds genuine in the question but the smirk on his face tells him otherwise. “No food. No money. No father.”

He flinches away when the man is in front of him.

“Answer me, boy.”

“The-- _the East_ ,” He stutters out. “I’m heading for The East.”

“You’ve got business… at the _East_? You don’t look like no Easterner to me.” He says and grips him tight at the face, digging nails into his cheeks. His eyes well up with tears before he can push away the salty twist at the corner of his eyes. “You gonna go there and steal some more, boy?”

“ _No_ ,” He answers pitifully, looking straight into the man’s eyes that are the colour of the sea—blue and lost in the horizon. “I want to be knighted with power. I want to fight with a sword and armour and kill the men who killed my father.”

“Revenge, eh?” The man chides, laughing. “You’ve got the same fire I have. I see it. I can almost taste it in your blood. You know how I know?”

He shakes his head.

“Because I just travelled mile away from home to kill my Uncle,” He tells. “Yeah, staked that son of a bastard with my dagger in his cock and tore his insides open.”

He gasps.

“Don’t kill me, Ser.” He pleads tearfully, fear humming under his skin. “I—I won’t steal again. I promise to you.”

The man snorts and loses the grip he has on him with a tasteful click of his tongue. “ _Psk_ , why would I want to kill you, boy? You have no gold and no weapon delightful enough to be of envy. No. I want to help you. Revenge is sweet, m’boy. I’ll tell you that. I will help you. What’s your name, orphan?”

“Stilinski,” He says and rubs on his face, can feel the lingering pressure of the man’s fingers still digging into his skin.

“Aye, _Stilinski_.” The man says and he sounds almost mocking. “I am Ser Whittemore, first knight of House Whittemore and the Pardieu and I’ve gave an orphan boy my word and I will swear on it. A knight I will make you be, and revenge will be what you seek. That’s your word. Don’t fuck with me, boy, or I will have the entire Kingsguard hang you on the chains and feed you to the sun.”

“Yes,” Stilinski trembles, hesitating for a while his brain clicks to how the last name sounds familiar until he makes the connection. “M’lord.”

Whittemore smacks him on the head. “I am no Lord. I am a knight—a murderer of my own blood and I’m teaching you to kill. I am nowhere a lord, foolish boy. Jackson, I am. Don’t call me no Ser or your tongue would be on my blade.”

He nods.

**Author's Note:**

> It's a work in progress and I don't know if I should continue this. (slumps pathetically)


End file.
